I'm a Libertarian living in Humboldt County, CA. I've lived here in Eureka since 1973 and joined the Libertarian Party in 1992. This blog will mostly focus on local political issues, but I may stray into state and national issues as well, when I can't help myself. Please post your comments by clicking on the "comments" link at the bottom of each post. Although I do moderate comments, you need not be a registered user to post them.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Stuck On Dial- Up Again

Lost my DSL connection yesterday morning. Out of the blue, just before 8:30am, my connection went dead. About the only warning something was wrong was my computer's battery pack clicked a couple times, which usually indicates we've lost power, or are about to.

I was hoping it was an area outage if for no other reason than somebody else would fix it. Checked with the Matteolis across the street. They hadn't had any problems. Bummer. Checked with the Stubs behind me. They were fine, but Laura mentioned they were with Suddenlink. Then I realized the Matteolis are, too. I'm with AT&T so there was still hope.

I call AT&T, hoping to find out it's an area outage but have to go through the whole troubleshooting procedure before I even talk to a real person. Finally, the real guy starts going through the troubleshooting routine with me and the battery on my phone goes dead. He calls back but I can't answer.

I come back from work hoping to find my DSL back up. Nope. Still down. I call AT&T again. Spend some time with a gal before the battery on the phone goes dead again. Connie had already bought a new phone but it wasn't fully charged yet. I'd warned the phone gal ahead of time so, when the phone started beeping, I had her call back to my cell phone.

After at least an hour of trying just about anything she could think of, no DSL connection. She finally says she's pretty sure it's my modem, offers to sell me one for $75.00 and says it could be here by Tuesday. I'm thinking now I should have accepted the offer.

Went up the street to Cornerstone Computers. They didn't have any hard wire modems in stock, but said they'd have some on Monday. That wasn't soon enough so I went to Staples. Staples didn't have any modems I was interested in. I went home figuring I'll just buy the one from Cornerstone on Monday, but what to do in the meantime?

Got dial- up working on the laptop last night. It was slow, slow, slow this morning when I tried to do my regular computer stuff. Took me as long just to enter my sweepstakes as it normally takes to enter sweeps, do the blogs and read my news and everything else.

Then I thought maybe I could figure out why dial- up wasn't working on this tower. It sure would be nicer to use this one, even if it was just as slow. Hooked the phone line into the modem and, wala, dial- up worked. Must have had the line hooked up wrong before.

Much nicer sitting here, and it seems quite a bit quicker than the laptop. It's probably because the web cache needs to be built up on the laptop that it took pages so long to load. It seems pretty quick on this tower.

I just hope it is the modem. I've had problems with the phone lines before their tests didn't pick it up until I snagged a phone guy I saw outside and had him check the lines. Almost makes me feel like switching to Suddenlink or even Satellite DSL but, when you think of it, all the big internet providers are pretty much the same when it comes to customer service and repairs.

One thing I've noticed, that I used to think a liability, is that we can't receive phone calls while I'm online. I kinda like that.

Most of the time it's not bad visiting web pages I already frequent, but I'm discouraged on clicking links to new pages as I have no idea how long it will take to load the page.

I guess it's a sign of the times but I wish web publishers wouldn't insist on cramming all they can onto web pages if only because DSL is the standard now. That can take pages a long time to load even with broadband. With dial- up some are impossible now.

I've found even Google mail sputters and coughs with dial- up. Yahoo mail not so much. At least Google offers a slow speed version of their e-mail page but I still had problems with that.

Another thing I've noticed that I like about dial- up is that once I'm disconnected, I'm disconnected. With DSL, as long as my computer is on, there's a potential for bad guys to mess with the computer.